Saturday, 15 May 2010

Tonal exercise on Black paper

As part of our still life class, we are learning about the technique of chiaroscuro. This is an Italian word that means light-dark, and refers to the use strong tonal contrasts in painting. You may have seen these paintings which look like the subject is brilliantly lit with a flood-light or bright sunshine, yet the background is very dark, almost black. The paintings are full of drama and excitement. Caravaggio and Rembrandt are two painters that spring to my mind who used this technique consummately.

Part of our preparation has been to take a portion of our still-lifes that we set up three weeks ago (yes, they are still there, and yes, the lilies have dripped their petals and the grapes are shriveling day by day), and render it with white wax pencil on black paper. As you can see I chose the frog.

YP, thank you. Yes, it would look good in colour. But the tonal studies are the first step. The next step is to do monochrome studies varying the 'ground'...

GB, the vanitas crowd painted lots of bugs, and were especially fond of depicting dead game - birds, fish, rabbits etc. I included my froggie because I came across Jacob De ii Ghen's four studies of frogs.